Nano draws huge crowd to showrooms

The world's cheapest car, Nano, arrived in city showrooms today, and thousands flocked to catch a glimpse, at the three dealer showrooms.

In Kolkata three leading Tata Motors dealers including Lexus Motors, R D Motors and K B Motors will be selling the cars. Each of them has received the premium or LX version of the Tata Nano priced at Rs 1.84 lakh ex-showroom.

"More than 1,000 visitors and interested buyers have come to our A J C Bose Road outlet during the day," said Binod Agarwal, director, Lexus Motors. Lexus has already sold 600 forms in the last two days, and has around 2,000 more interested buyers lined up.

"The advertisements for the bookings will go on air and in the print media from tommorrow and we expect further surge in enquiries then", said a K B Motors official.

Buoyed by the demand, eastern India's largest Tata Motors dealer, Lexus Motors, will offer booking facilities for the Tata Nano and sell it from its commercial vehicles outlets in the city's suburbs.

Lexus was in the process of building an F-1 showroom for the car in Singur and had to abandon the plans after the company's decision to relocate the mother plant to Sanand near Ahmedabad. "We have, however, completed one such outlet at Barasat and Uluberia and would sell the Nano from there," Agarwal said.

The 500-800 square feet F-1 outlets were planned to display the entire passenger car range of Tata Motors and were targeted at the suburban areas that would have a significant demand for the entry level car.

While the company promised to retain the Rs 1 lakh price for the first one lakh Nanos, the base model in Kolkata would cost Rs 1.3 lakh.